Yurii Valentinovich Knorozov in the Context of the Soviet Ethnographic Science of the Mid and Late Twentieth Century

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of theoretical ideas of Yuri Knorozov (1922–1999) in the context of the development of Soviet ethnology/ethnography. In the late 1940s, Knorozov’s ideas were influenced by his peer professors Sergei Tolstov and Sergei Tokarev. It is likely that Knorozov’s first theoretical work dedicated to the origins of exogamy was written following Tolstov’s ideas. The interest of the young Knorozov in the study of shamanism and secret societies also finds parallels in Tolstov’s works. At the same time, Knorozov suggested a new concept of the evolution of the calendar and its connection to the dual organization of the primitive society and its survivals in early class societies. In the 1960s, he paid less attention to ethnology and started his collaboration with linguists and experts in cybernetics, working on the development of the theory of signalization and general scheme of the decipherment. Knorozov returned to the ethnological issues later in the 1970s and turned again to the study of the relation between calendar, religion, and the tribal dual organization among the Ancient Maya. The theory of ethnosemiotics formulated by Knorozov in the late 1970s can be considered as an alternative to the official Soviet theory of ethnos elaborated under the aegis of Yulian Bromley in the same decade.